the TOWN HALL weblog

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy

In this issue:

1. Bears

2. Solar

3. Kennedy

1. Bears. Anchorage had its first brown bear mauling in memory a week ago, as a 15 year old in Far North Bicentennial Park who was taking part in a 24-hour long mountain bike race was attacked and mauled to within an inch of her life. Readers of this column ought to remember my increasing displeasure and alarm with the growing numbers of brown and black bears in and around the Anchorage Bowl. I have been warning that people and bears do not mix well, and someone will get hurt. Well, that just happened. And what is the State of Alaska doing about it? What is the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) doing about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing, other than defending the bears from hunting and removal. The mauling took place along a local stream in the park. Salmon are now present in the stream and over the years, the unchecked and unhunted number of brown bears feeding on the salmon has skyrocketed to over 20 brown bears frequenting the very small and mostly urban area. Note also that the area is a popular ski, skijoring, mountain bike, jogging and recreation area year round. The wildlife guys blamed the problem on ADF&G Sportfish, which controls fishing along the stream. The self-serving, not my fault logic is that if the fish aren’t there, neither will the bears be there. Even the Municipal Parks and Recreations guy got into the act, claiming that there is no proof that there are more bears present in the Anchorage Bowl today than in previous years, despite what the citizenry has been saying for years. But the facts belie claims by the state and local guys. Bear hunting in the surrounding state and national forest east of Anchorage has been all but shut down for the last 30 years. Over that time, the bear population has continued to grow. Old bears make young bears, which are pushed down the mountains and into town by the old boars (who will otherwise kill and eat them). Over the last generation, we have seen an ever increasing number of bears here in town. ADF&G has refused to do anything about them, opting instead to manage the people by imposing restrictions on bird feeders, telling us when we can take our trash out, and placing other restrictions – along with tickets to enforce those restrictions – on homeowners and the general public. The government, as governments almost always do, has pursued policies that end up making all our lives less safe, less free, and more dangerous. Under existing laws, we simply can’t blow away a threatening animal here in town and call ADF&G to recover the carcass. And the biologists at ADF&G kill very few problem animals every year so the trend line in total bear population always increases. The state employees also get to define what a problem animal is and what it is not. This is the largest city in this part of the world, with over half the population of the state. We have elderly and people in wheelchairs just like other cities nationwide. I have always thought that eventually there will be a bear that decides some oldster in a walker or some handicapper in a wheelchair is little more than a slow moving meal in a fancy food holder, and do what bears do. With the mauling last week, we got one step closer to this outcome. As usual, with political problems, there will be political solutions. And a population that has given away the power to manage the large wildlife to the State of Alaska in return for public safety will quickly take that power back when public safety is no longer being delivered. I expect there to be a number of brown bears shot and the carcasses left in various parts of Anchorage over the course of the next several months. I also expect this problem to end up being yet another campaign issue for statewide elections in November and Municipal elections next April. If the bureaucracy refuses to solve the problem they have allowed to metastasize and grow, perhaps the politicians will provide some better guidance. If the politicians refuse, the public will take care of the problem by alternative means in a very short period of time. ADN, Sun.

2. Solar. The current energy crunch gives us yet another vehicle by which to smoke out the greens embedded in the regulatory world and identify them and their superiors for all to see. The latest dust-up comes out of the bureau of Land Management (BLM), which halted for two years all new leases for solar energy projects on federal land pending completion of environmental impact studies. In other words, there are companies out there that figure they can now make money generating solar energy, want to lease federal land (mainly in the West and Southwest where there is plenty of sunlight) to set up plants, and the greens at the BLM are tying them up in paperwork to obstruct, deny and delay the new projects. How many years have we heard from these very same greens that we must immediately get off fossil fuels and use renewables, with solar being defined as one of those renewables? Well, that move has begun, the marketplace is starting to speak, and the greens don’t want the move to solar energy made. They are now using the bureaucracy to bury the solar entrepreneurs in environmental paperwork – just like they do to loggers, oil people, miners, nuclear energy and coal miners. BLM imposed their moratorium a month ago, and triggered a blistering reaction from the entrepreneurs, congresscritters and the general public. Last week they abruptly lifted the moratorium and announced that they will start accepting and processing proposals for new solar energy projects. According to a NYT article from July 3, BLM has received over 130 new applications for solar energy projects in the West and Southwest, requesting leases on over a million acres of desert. Of course, the greens in the bureaucracy didn’t backtrack very far, promising to complete their comprehensive environmental impact statements on all solar energy projects on federal land anyway. Given their current position, I do not expect the outcome of that work to be particularly supportive of new energy development in the west.

3. Kennedy. The current swing vote on the SCOTUS is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has moved increasingly leftward with his opinions over the years, particularly in the 5-4 votes. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion last month that determined that execution of child rapists was cruel and unusual punishment, invalidating state laws in Louisiana and several other states. The excuse he used for this travesty was the evolving national consensus against capital punishment. As it turns out, he missed something during his time on Mount Olympus. He missed the direction of the evolving national consensus toward execution of child rapists, not only at the state level, but at the federal level as well. The entire system blew this one, as congress passed legislation in 2006 that modified the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and included capital punishment for child rapists who were members of the military. None of the ten briefs filed in the case mentioned this legislation. The Solicitor General even missed it. And the SCOTUS majority missed it. When congress passed legislation, it is by definition a national consensus of sorts – whether our black robed masters like it or not. The SCOTUS majority now looks like a bunch of overreaching, grasping, social engineering idiots. It took a military justice blog to catch the error, which was then researched by Patterico and Captain Ed at Hot Air. The state of Louisiana now has grounds to request the SCOTUS reconsider their opinion, as the opinion was based on a national consensus that does not exist. We will hope they take advantage of this opening, request reconsideration, and embarrass the five self-serving, social engineering fools in the SCOTUS majority a bit. There are two other tidbits on this one. First, the state of Louisiana responded immediately to the opinion by passing legislation requiring chemical or physical castration for child rapists. The second is to recall exactly how Anthony Kennedy managed to find himself on the SCOTUS bench. He was the third choice of the Reagan WH after Ted Kennedy and a democrat majority in the senate successfully executed their character assassination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. So this opinion, like all 5-4 opinions that undermine the rule of law, the constitution, the separation of powers, and usurp powers to the SCOTUS that were never intended for the SCOTUS, can be laid at the feet of Ted Kennedy and the democrats who followed his lead in 1987. Bork wouldn’t have done this. A lesser man did.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.